The wine regions of Spain, which are known as Denominación de Origens (DO), do not neatly fit into the seventeen geo-political Autonomous Regions that comprise the country of Spain. Nor do they fit neatly within the fifty provinces into which these Autonomous Regions are sub-divided. Some of the wine regions in fact straddle the boundaries of more than one Autonomous Region, some are fragmented across their own geographic region, and in the case of DO Cava it is not associated with any particular geographic region as its constituent parts/members are dispersed throughout Spain.

Each DO has its own controlling government body called the Consejo Regulador, which administrates and regulates the production of Quality Wines within their jurisdiction. This authority ensures wine carrying their DO label meets their approved standards in terms of grape varieties used, blends of grapes used within the wines, etc. It is this regulation which in part ensures the wines from each of the DOs within Spain maintain their unique local characteristics.

Today there are more than 60 DOs, located both on the mainland, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands. Recently a number of new wine regions have reached the standard required to achieve DO status, and have subsequently been approved by the INDO. In recent times, a higher standard known as Denominación de Origen Calificada (DoCa) has also been introduced by the Spanish government, but so far only Rioja has achieved this status.

Prior to a wine region achieving DO status, wines from an area are typically approved as Vino de la Tierra (VT or VdlT). Wines approved as VT must, in the same way as DO approved wines, carry a vintage date and regional identification.

There are two other wine classifications which you may see on the labels of bottles which fall outside the DO classification system. These are Vino de Mesa (VM or VdM) table wines which do not carry vintage dates or regional identification (more often than not they are a blend of wines from many regions and vintages), and Vino Comarcal (VC or CV) wines which may carry a vintage date and the name of the area from which they originate. The area of origination of VC wines may in fact be the same as an official DO, but these wines are typically made from grapes, or blends of grapes not approved by the local Consejo Regulador.